Reviews RCD2164

In her duo with electric guitarist Stian Westerhus, on the 2012 concert recording "Didymoi Dreams" and this no less impressive sequel, Endresen foregrounds the voice housed in flesh. And her performance certainly bring home the multiple functions of the mouth... there´s nothing quite like it. Westerhus is the perfect foil - a musician positioned as far from air guitar as Endresen is from disembodied voice. When it fits he can get shimmery and vaporous, shadowing Endresen as she recoils into vulnerability; but mostly he provides her with a suitably splintered, jagged accompaniment packed with metallic crackle and twang and shrewdly manipulated textural electronics. Both performers sound at once strictly disciplined and dangerously spontaneous, razor sharp and vividly physical. Both plunge in deep and stretch their own limits.The Wire (UK)

On their second album, this Norwegian duo—veteran singer Sidsel Endresen and hotshot experimental guitarist Stian Westerhus—dive into their improvisations with increasing fearlessness, colliding wordless abstraction and floor-ratting physicality. Endresen once trafficked in a sort of post-Joni Mitchell jazz-folk sound, but now she has a language all her own: an imaginary vocabulary, elucidated in a halting tumble of cracked, wheezy, or glottal vocalizations. Westerhus uses a phalanx of effects pedals that transforms his atmospheric guitar into a miniature symphony, adding flurries of violence, smatterings of percussive noise, and fountains of gnarled feedback. The two musicians play off each other deftly but furiously, and their jagged, high-flying dance is as exciting, imaginative, and visceral as anything I've heard in years.Chicago Reader (US)

Her strangled desperation to expel sounds on "Ripped Silk", and her alien growl on "Baton", becoming a scraped-raw exhalation across chasms then a conversational murmur, is grippingly emotional. Her barely verbal language inevitably recalls primal forest fears and Aborginial cultures. "Boom Boom" shows her aptitude as a smoky-timbred torch-singer, the warmth behind her extended technique. 4/5.Jazzwise (UK)

Turning to Norway, Bonita, the first studio collaboration of improvising vocalist Sidsel Endresen and guitarist Stian Westerhus, takes music to places it’s hardly been before. Alternately playful and intense (with a disturbing edge) the album could be a product of the pioneering boundary-breaking label ESP records, whose Patty Waters comes to mind.The Artsdesk (UK)

What a mesmerising almighty racket they have concocted across nine "songs" which have been battered into spluttered smithereens and left as malformed pieces of sound wreckage bleeding at the seems. Elsewhere on "Bonita" are more subdued moments, with the constant knife-edge awareness that Endresen and Westerhus will unleash further gleeful carnage leaving another song a shuddering mess on the floor.Rock-a-Rolla (UK)

The genre-bending joker is wild as Norwegian Grammy-winner Sidsel Endresen vocalizes in guttural whispers and sudden wails. Frenetic, animalistic and, at times, electronically funneled sounds explode in every part of her range on Bonita (Rune Grammofon), an entirely improvised experimental duo album with the brilliant Norwegian electric guitarist Stian Westerhus. The pair dives with entrained and fearless abandon, casting a blinding light outside Plato’s Cave; the album is way outside the box.New York City Jazz Record (US)

What do the new (forthcoming) albums of Scott Walker & Sunn O))), Daniel Lanois and Sidsel Endresen/Stian Westerhus have in common? Disturbance, a considerable amount of harshness, and, in rare moments, unexpected tenderness! Scott and Sidsel get or certainly will get a huge amount of great reviews because they have strong admirers: nearly always the same small bunch of people who sings the praise, and for all the good reasons. I had the luck to listen to the second duo album Sidsel and Stian will release on Rune Grammofon in late November. Two days ago I vanished under my set of headphones and, listening to “Bonita”, I was transported to an oldfashioned bar with old chandeliers and a Wurlitzer jukebox. Two people – bathing in neon lights – danced to this undanceable music (coming from a fantastic sound system Jamaican style). Dancing to this only seems possible in radical exercises of “Ausdruckstanz”. Listening to the duo, I forgot my standard aesthetic vocabulary, the word “postmodernism” lost any meaning. Sidsel Endresen is the most expressionist voice in modern music since Meredith Monk, and guitarist Stian Westerhus is playing with fire extending the vocabulary of his fucking old electric guitar with a grim smile on his face.Manafonistas (DE)

Endresen is a Norvegian composer, actor and above all an extraordinary vocalist. In the 80s she worked mainly as member of the Jon Eberson Group. At the end of the 80s she started her solo career and released numerous albums under her own name, including for the prestigious ECM label. Also she was involved in many different collaborations. Her work with Stian Westerhus being one of them. In 2012 they released their first album ‘Didymoi Dreams’. Guitarist Westerhus is known for his work with Jaga Jazzist and Puma, as well as his collaboration with Jan Bang, Arve Henriksen, Nils Petter Molvaer. He developed a very experimental style, using lots of extended techniques, making you forget your are listening to a guitar.. This is again very evident in this new duo work with Endresen, called ‘Bonita’. And it is substantial part of the fun concerning this record. Westerhus plays wild and captivating, creates amazing, unheard soundscapes. The ‘songs’ are very abstract and out on the one side, but very emotional and beautiful on the other side. Everything was improvised live in the studio. The non-verbal singing by Endresen is also a joy to listen to. Very evocative. As a duo effort however I was not completely convinced. Their daring improvisations do not always make a unity on all levels in my perception. But an amazing work it is!Vital Weekly